“Yeah, that’s why they’re called fanatics.”
“But how are you up and walking and talking and—”
“Well,” he said, suddenly uncomfortable, “I heal pretty fast.”
“Of course. You’re Nephilim.”
“How did you—”
“Actually, it was Reyes.”
The two of them shook hands. Shawn seemed a little star struck. I could hardly blame him.
“You gave permission for the authorities to come in?” I asked him.
“I did. Weeks ago. The FBI has been investigating the Diviners for years and, technically, it’s all mine. The land. The buildings. Everything.” He turned bitter. “Dear old Dad didn’t want anything in his name, so he put it all in mine years ago.”
Sounded like him.
“Do you have access to the paperwork?” I asked, praying there’d be something about the fake adoption agency the Fosters had set up.
“Every forged document.”
With that paperwork, we had a chance of getting the charges against Veronica Isom dropped.
“What about your par … the Fosters. Any idea where they went?”
He shook his head. “I do know they were building something in the main barn.”
“Building something?”
“I don’t know what. My contacts weren’t in the inner circle, but they did say the guys were spending a lot of time in there.”
“Thanks. I’ll check it out.”
I strolled that way, trying to steer clear of the emergency crew as Uncle Bob spoke with Shawn. I hadn’t noticed any new construction in the barn, but I’d been pretty out of it.
“Want me to take her?” Reyes asked, scanning the yard for any sign of danger.
“I’m good.” I hugged her to me, seemingly unable to put her down. I buried my face in her curls and breathed in her scent before asking, “Do you feel them?”
“The Fosters? No. But there’s a lot of emotion here to sort through.”
“True.”
However, the moment we walked into the barn, we felt them. They were hiding like little rats, and I realized the bales of hay in the corner were covering something up. The Diviners had built a hidden room.
We eased closer. Reyes, who still didn’t want to shift, to heal himself instantaneously, put a finger over his mouth, motioned me to stay back, and stepped toward the wall of hay. He went around what we could see but found no door.
I gestured to him that I would go around back. He lowered his head and gave me a warning scowl.
“What?” I mouthed. Fine. I stayed put for Dawn’s sake.
She stirred, and I bounced her as Reyes pushed, testing the hay in this place or that. When nothing worked, I checked the dirt floor. Maybe there was an underground access point. But before I got too far, we heard a click.
Reyes had pushed on the side and found a panel of some kind. I stepped over to him as he pulled. A door gave way to total darkness, but they were inside. I could feel them. I patted my jeans for the flashlight Garrett had given me, found it, then jumped when a gunshot splintered the air.
Without thought, I shifted and slowed time at once. The gun had not been aimed at me. Nor at Reyes. The bullet traveling at what seemed like light speed headed straight toward the back of Dawn’s head.
I clutched her to me and closed my eyes, only I’d shifted so I could still see. Could still watch as the bullet entered her skull, traveled through it, continued through my neck, and stopped only when Reyes closed his hand around it.
Anger ignited inside me like the splitting of an atom that set off a nuclear bomb. I turned on them. The evil beings who hurt. Who took advantage of and destroyed. Who murdered in His name. If that wasn’t taking God’s name in vain, I didn’t know what was.
I had no control over the rage that boiled inside me, the power that burst out of me in one blinding flash. So hot it scorched my skin and singed my hair. So cold it froze the air around us.
Reyes stepped between me and the Fosters. Wrapped his arms around both Dawn and me. Soothed my soul with his warm breath fanning across my ear. He cupped my chin and his fingers brushed my cheek.
Then I realized it wasn’t his fingers, but the feathers of his massive, black wings. He was blocking the scene before me. The scene I’d caused. But I was too busy being fascinated with the musical sound I heard when his wings brushed me. A tinkling melody, like ice defrosting under the heat of the sun. And I realized it was ice. His wings were brushing across the ice on my arm. On my face. And then, just as quickly as it had appeared, it evaporated. His heat had melted it.
Uncle Bob ran in, followed closely by Garrett and Shawn. I knew Ubie and Garrett couldn’t see Reyes’s wings, but I wondered if Shawn could.
“Take her,” Reyes said, and I realized he’d dematerialized when the gun went off. He’d ruined his injured look, not that we needed it. We had enough on the Fosters to put them away for a very long time.
It was Garrett’s horrified expression that finally dragged me out of my thoughts. Shawn looked inside and paled. I leaned to see past Reyes, but he wouldn’t let me. He kept himself between me and the room behind him.
I glared. Then I tensed. Then I worried. What had I done? A spike of anxiety rushed through me, causing an electrical surge to shoot over my skin.
“Reyes,” I whispered as Garrett wrapped his hands over my shoulders, “what did I do?”
Garrett urged me back, gently leading me away. But I had to know. I pulled out of his grip and rushed past my husband. Mr. and Mrs. Foster lay in a pile of twisted and mangled limbs, as though every bone in their bodies had been shattered from the inside out. Their heads lay at unnatural angles and it was almost impossible to tell where one Foster sibling ended and the other began.
I threw a hand over my mouth and turned to Reyes. “I didn’t do that. Did I do that? How could I do that?” Then to Shawn. “I’m so sorry.”
Reyes bit down and gestured for Garrett to get me away. Several other officers were filing in, wondering where the gunshot had come from, as Garrett led me outside.
Shawn came out first. A resolved sadness had overcome him. I wanted to talk to him, but say what? Sorry for horridly mangling the people who raised you?
Reyes came out a while later, but everyone else was taking turns getting a glimpse of the Fosters, as though they were a sideshow attraction.
He walked up and covered me with a blanket.
“Dawn should have woken when the gun went off,” I said to him.
“You shifted her,” Reyes said as though proud of me.
“That’s why she didn’t wake up?”
“That would be my guess.”
I had the feeling her comalike state had something to do with our shift onto a celestial plane as well. If she wasn’t different before, she danged sure would be now.
“I killed them.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have. You also saved that little girl’s life. Along with who knows how many others.”
“But I didn’t just kill them. I … mutilated them.”
“Dutch—”
“I really am a monster.”
He took my shoulders and turned me toward him. “You, Dutch, are by no means a monster. If anything, they got off easy.”
I didn’t buy it for a minute, but another conundrum popped into my addled mind. “How can I explain this to Uncle Bob?”
“You don’t have to. The official report will say the Fosters were hiding in a secret room when a wall of cinderblocks they’d stored there fell on them. There was a whole pile out back. It’s taken care of.”
I didn’t know what to say. I lowered my head and rocked Dawn. An ambulance was waiting to transport her to a hospital in Albuquerque, but I couldn’t put her down just yet. Reyes sat with me, wrapped his arms around both of us, and took some of Dawn’s weight off my back.
The sun crested the horizon when I noticed a couple, frantic and searching, standing behind the crime-scene tape. They were talking to a young deputy, trying to convince her that they’d been called to the scene by APD.
I stood, shaking Reyes out of a light slumber, and walked closer.
“Please, they said they were going to transport our daughter to a hospital, but we couldn’t wait. She’s still out here.”
“Sir, I can’t let you through either way.”
But the deputy’s words weren’t getting through. As the man argued with her, the woman spotted me walking forward with my bundle. I recognized them from news articles, so I pulled the blanket off Dawn’s hair. Mrs. Brooks cried out, ducked under the tape, and ran for dear life, dodging one officer after another like a professional running back.
Dawn must’ve heard her mother’s cries. She blinked awake and rubbed her eyes.
“Is that funny woman your mommy?” I asked her.
She finally looked over. After a moment, recognition set in. She took the thumb out of her mouth and bucked her legs in the international signal for put me the hell down. Then she ran as fast as her twelve-inch legs would carry her, meeting her mother at the thirty-yard line.
Her father wasn’t far behind. They scooped Dawn up and formed a huddle. Only they cried a lot more in theirs than most huddlers do.
Mrs. Brooks looked over at me just as I started to walk away. “Charley?” she asked.
Good guess. I nodded and walked back to them.